Shirley Curran
On the dust-jacket of my copy of Emma Donoghue’s Room it says, ‘Room is a book to read in one sitting. When it’s over, you look up: the world looks the same but you are somehow different …’ (Audrey Niffenegger, Author of The Time Traveller’s Wife). She’s right. I simply couldn’t put this book down. it is moving, fascinating, shocking and unforgettable.
Jack who narrates the story is five years old. We meet him on his fifth birthday in the 11-foot square room he shares with Ma. He knows no other world except the fantasy world of the television. Ma reveals to him that there is a world beyond the locked door of Room.
Emma Donoghue has recreated the life of Ma and Jack in the 11 by 11 prison with extraordinary imagination. I couldn’t help wondering whether her novel was inspired by real situations that appalled the western world.
Jack is destined to escape to that other world and we accompany him on a memorable journey of introduction to the real world. We never tire of his five-year old voice as he copes with the problems of life ‘outside’. Ma has been imprisoned in that room for seven years and the shock of escape is almost too much for her.
Room is gripping. You should set aside time to read it in a single go!
GenevaLunch, 21 February 2011.
Filed under: Fiction
Tags: Emma Donoghue, Room
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 21st, 2011 at 6:35 pm
I mostly agree, although I was troubled the whole time I read it by the sense it was too contrived, too much a work written as the author’s attempt to imagine what it would be like to be locked up for so long. The famous cases in recent years in Austria and elsewhere interfered with my reading. That said, we’ve all wondered this and Donoghue sat down and wrote about it, encouraging us to keep those questions alive.
It’s the kind of fiction that reminds you that life is even stranger than fiction, and in this case, we owe it to the victims to be reminded.